Everything about Project Management and Microsoft EPM

Prologue: Global economical downtrend has driven governments to infuse more money into the business world. In India Infrastructure projects for Power, Roads, Airports are undertaken as part of the natural process of economical developments. The actions in such cases have led to many major projects being taken up with construction as the basic need. As a result an important revelation and concern is that the majority of Construction projects are behind schedule and over budget which get further weighed down by litigation and dispute settlement issues

In India, contactors, Banks, Clients and also insurance companies, need to evaluate the impact of delay. In most cases the predominant questions to be answered relate to time overrun due to delays. In all such cases it becomes mandatory to establish the actual delay and its shared responsibility between Client and Contractor.

The Global Practise: In the previous decades a different methodology was commonly used to establish the quantum and responsibility of delays for any settlement in courts or out of courts. Courts in America usually did not accept claims for concurrent delays. The CPM analysis brought in a new dimension to delay analysis. In the present times many refer to the  AACE International (RP) Recommended Practice No. 29R-03. OR The Society of Construction Law Delay and Disruption Protocol.

AACE International in the RP 29R-03 states: “Forensic scheduling analysis refers to the study and investigation of events using CPM or other recognized schedule calculation methods for potential use in a legal proceeding. It is the study of how actual events interacted in the context of a complex model for the purpose of understanding the significance of a specific deviation or series of deviations from some baseline model and their role in determining the sequence of tasks within the complex network.”

In India: There is a need for expertise and experienced analysers to be able to use the protocols. It is to be based on an expertise and knowledge in CPM/PERT and also the understanding of scheduling software like Primavera ® P6 or Microsoft Office Project 2007 EPM. The experts also need an understanding about contract law and contracts. Knowledge about quantity survey as applied by standard procedures is also  an added requirement in many cases.

Such expertise is considered essential in cases where there is delay which is attributed to both parties to a contract.

A common example of a  conflict is when a contractor commences work knowing that a part or the whole site is under the process of acquisition from original owners of the land.

Hence stakeholders like banks, insurance, material suppliers, sub-contractors, need to consider fixing of responsibility for any delays.

The general practice that is now being followed is to form panels of expertise by attaching experts to arbitrators and law firms and to avoid forming separate bodies for redress. As a result it is now increasingly common for banks or insurers to retain on their rolls, consultants or a panel of experts to deal in such matters.